Bike Builder Focus: Blandford Bicycles

Location : Lake Oswego, Oregon USA
Style of bikes: Custom frame design, City Porteur bikes.
Production Methods: Fillet braised constructions
Builder / designer / appointer : Chris Blandford

Tucked away in the back roads of Lake Oswego, Oregon, Chris Blandford of Blandford Bicycles hosts his workshop and machining lab in Dwell magazine style surroundings. Chris tells others that he owes his creativity and innovative spirit to his grandfather (that’s his welding mask on the bookshelf). He explains that his grandfather impressively designed and then successfully mass manufactured several items of commercial machinery, which serves as a source of inspiration for him.

Having scoped Chris on Instagram, and seen imagery dripping in engineering and machinist acumen, clean surfaces, precision run out gauges and so on, I asked Chris if he had an engineering background. Turns out that his methodical passion for machining and tooling came from the sole need to create and was fuelled by the inspiration from his grandfather.

Chris started his career with design top of mind, (a form of art meets production creativity) Early on he spent many years as a graphic designer and marketer, but longed to step away from the computer and create in a way that felt natural, with his hands. His opportunity came through a couple of bike building classes held by UBI in 2016 and 2018

Fast forward a few years, the bike building world is pretty small and Chris and Oscar Camarena (of Simple Bicycle) met and partnered to work on a frame building venture for a couple of years, until recently where Chris spun off to his solo enterprise.

What are the Blandford bike specialities?

Blandford bicycles has honed vision and believe that bikes hand crafted by people have soul and a value that is difficult to quantify. Chris celebrates simple yet advanced urban town bikes for a particular customer who values this style. Look out for his range to launch at Made Show 2024. In short – hyper considered porteur style city bike with modern technology, clean lines and attention to detail that blends form and function.

The Jewels in the Blandford Shop

On a side note -the methodical approach really impressed me. Demonstrated in tools and fixtures that Chris has custom made to address bike building problems, improve the quality or speed up the process. He created a simple but accurate fixture for machining a brake bridge, a highly adaptable Unicrown fork jig, and even designed, machined, and assembled a very precise wheel truing stand when he couldn’t find one during the Covid shortages. In their own right, these tools could be a business in itself. These are the kinds of things that a problem solver makes 😊

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